How bad they would have been: the role of counterfactual thought in moral judgments of actions and inactions
Restricted (Penn State Only)
Author:
Ruger, Becca
Graduate Program:
Psychology
Degree:
Master of Science
Document Type:
Master Thesis
Date of Defense:
October 04, 2024
Committee Members:
Sean Laurent, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor Karen Gasper, Committee Member Kristin Buss, Program Head/Chair Roger Beaty, Committee Member
Keywords:
moral judgment inaction outcome severity counterfactual
Abstract:
Although significant attention has been devoted to inaction in non-moral literatures (e.g., goal-seeking, bystander effects), in moral judgment research, inaction has been studied almost exclusively in the framework of trolley dilemmas and omission biases. This work expands knowledge of inaction judgments in the moral domain by testing the impact of counterfactual thought and outcome severity on moral character judgments. Three experiments (Ns = 200, 300. 293) tested how counterfactual (vs. actual) judgments differed for actions and inactions. Beyond replicating outcome biases, the experiments provided consistent evidence that ratings of immorality for actual actors (i.e., who perform antisocial acts) are higher than when people make counterfactual judgments of non-actors. Mixed evidence was found for immoral actors and non-actors on evaluations of their positive moral character. Overall, this suggests that counterfactual thinking impacts moral character judgments and provides preliminary evidence that inaction judgments are attenuated compared to action judgments.
